Ending Childhood Hunger by 2015

Hunger Action Network of New York State

The Hunger Action Network of New York State (HANNYS) is a statewide anti-hunger coalition that combines grassroots organizing at the local level with state level research, education and advocacy to address the root causes of hunger, including poverty.  HANNYS lauds and strongly supports the President's pledge to end childhood hunger by 2015.

Eliminating childhood hunger by 2015 is a challenging goal that requires an equally challenging agenda.  Hunger cannot be eradicated without addressing the broader issues of poverty and economic insecurity; security for children is contingent on security for families.  To meet the President's goal, more action and collaboration is needed among the various federal agencies. USDA by itself can not end hunger among children.

We endorse the various positions submitted today by the North East Regional Anti-Hunger Network. We are one of the two statewide groups representing New York in this coalition. As NERAHN notes, the right to healthy food is a basic human right. A nation free from childhood hunger is one in which low-income families have the resources they need to access enough nutritious food with dignity, and where children are fed without stigma wherever they are – including at home, in school, during the summer, in childcare and in afterschool settings.

Certainly an expanded and improved Child Nutrition Programs would be an essential foundation to ending childhood hunger in America by 2015. We believe that ending the income restrictions on such programs and making them universal would greatly assist in reducing child hood hunger and malnutrition while helping to ease the stigma that is sometimes associated with the programs, particularly among older children (e.g., teenagers). At a minimum, reimbursement for schools and other agencies participating in such programs must be increased to more realistic levels while administrative burdens and roadblocks should be eliminated to the extent. Food stamp (SNAP) benefits need to be significantly increased to enable all families to obtain a healthy, nutritious diet.

Ending childhood hunger begins with recognizing a right to healthy, nutritious food in America. We believe that a related goal should be to close almost all food pantries and soup kitchens in our country by 2015. They are a thousand points of shame for the inability of the world’s richest nation to take care of our must vulnerable members..

We need to significantly strengthen the minimum nutrition standards for all federal food programs, starting with the programs targeting children (e.g., school lunch and breakfast, summer meals). All foods distributed or sold in our schools need to be subjected to such standards. We should reduce the exposure of child and others to harmful chemicals by reducing the use of pesticides and other chemical additives in our food supply and by promoting organic and sustainable agriculture practices (e.g., adoption of the European Union green agriculture principles.)

We need to change our overall agriculture politics that promote cheap calories rather than affordable nutrition. This should be part of a comprehensive anti-obesity program for children. The Farm Bill commodity subsidies program needs to be radically overhauled, with subsidies instead going primarily to support fruits, vegetables and other nutritious foods. Instead of subsidizing large corporate agribusiness, we need to sustain family farmers and the rural communities that support them. We endorse the positions outlined last year by Bread for the World with respect to the Farm Bill. We also need to invest in the agriculture infrastructure such as small scale food processing and distribution systems needed to sustain small and middle sized farm operations, as well as wholesale farmers markets.

USDA should also promote sustainable local food economies which will become even more critical as the world deals with the escalating problems of climate change and peak oil.

Bonuses should be provided for food stamps / SNAP that are utilized at farmer markets, farm stands and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). USDA should promote the expansion of CSAs to all Americans; subsidies should be provided to make CSAs more affordable to low-income Americans.

In America, hunger is more directly tied to poverty than in other countries. Thus any program to end hunger needs to address poverty. President Obama’s “Tackling Domestic Hunger” analysis made the important point that “The most effective way to eliminate childhood hunger and reduce hunger among adults is through a broad expansion of economic opportunity.” To do that, he outlined a range of initiatives “to reduce and alleviate poverty, including providing permanent tax relief for working families, expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, raising the minimum wage, and providing affordable, accessible health insurance.”

Nutrition programs alone can’t carry the whole burden of government supports to end childhood hunger when employment falls short. There must be decent family incomes on which to build. The nation must bolster incomes and lift the incomes of as many families as possible well above the poverty line.

We believe that the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) has done an excellent job in outlining key steps needed to improve the overall economy to end hunger.  We support FRAC’s seven strategies:

• Restore economic growth and create jobs with better wages for lower-income workers.
• Raise the incomes of the lowest-income families.
• Strengthen the SNAP/Food Stamp Program.
• Strengthen the Child Nutrition Programs.
• Engage the entire federal government in ending childhood hunger.
• Work with states, localities and nonprofits to expand and improve participation in federal nutrition programs.

See http://www.frac.org/pdf/endingchildhunger_2015paper.pdf

Decent paying jobs are one of the principal ways out of poverty. We need more jobs targeted at low-income workers. The minimum wage should be restored to its historical level of allowing a worker and two dependents to escape poverty (e.g., $10 an hour). Various children related income supports (e.g., EITC) should be increased. The US and South Africa are the only two industrial nations without universal child care. We should enact such a program as soon as possible.

Many countries address childhood poverty and hunger by providing a children’s allowance to ensure that all children, regardless of their parents’ income status, begin life with the basic necessities.

In the US, by contrast, we have instead relied on a means-tested income program for children (Aid to Dependent children) that has always been inadequate. Congress recently replaced it with an even more restrictive Temporary Assistance for Needy Families that is allegedly (and largely ineffectually) targeted at work assistance for adults rather than alleviating child poverty. In New York for instance, the number of children receiving such federal assistance dropped from 2/3 of eligible poor children under ADC to only 1/3 of eligible poor children under TANF. Meanwhile, even despite a recent 10% increase in the basic grant, benefits provided by this program to children comes to barely half of the federal poverty level.

The United States should also join the rest of the industrial world in providing universal health care. Instead, Congress is about to enact a universal health insurance mandate, something that is very different, leaving tens of millions of Americans without access to quality health care. We endorse a single payer Medicare for All type programs that treats health care as a human right; ends the treatment of health care services as a commodity to be traded for the highest profits; and ends the waste and costs associated with our system of for-profit private health insurance.

Hunger Action supports cutting the federal military budget by at least 50% to help provide the funds needed to support the initiatives outlined above. As President Eisenhower warned the country in 1953, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

We support the enactment of a soda tax to curb the harmful consumption of soda by Americans, particularly harmful for children, while generating funds needed to expand and initiate beneficial nutrition programs.

HANNYS is pleased to be participating in this dialogue and is eager to begin engaging in the process of reaching President Obama's goal. 

Respectfully submitted,

Hunger Action Network of New York State

Mark A. Dunlea, Executive Director

Elizabeth Gilbert, NYC Anti-Hunger Organizer

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October 6th , 2009

The Northeast Regional Anti-Hunger Network (NERAHN) is a coalition of anti-hunger organizations from each state in the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Northeast Region. NERAHN works to reduce hunger by maximizing our resources through collaboration and to advocate on the state, regional and national levels. NERAHN strongly supports President Obama’s pledge to end childhood hunger by 2015.

The right to healthy food is a basic human right. A nation free from childhood hunger is one in which low-income families have the resources they need to access enough nutritious food with dignity, and where children are fed without stigma wherever they are – including at home, in school, during the summer, in childcare and in afterschool settings. To fully eliminate hunger by 2015 requires not only the expertise of anti-hunger advocates but also broad-based and innovative economic and monetary policy which restores and sustains economic growth and includes job training, creating higher paying jobs, expanding tax credits for working families and providing income supports for low-income households to meet all of their basic needs, including affordable housing and utilities, health care, and transportation.

There are several concrete improvements to existing nutrition programs that can help provide food and resources to low-income families. To that end, NERAHN makes the following recommendations to reduce and prevent childhood hunger and ensure that all families in the Northeast region and across the nation can access enough healthy food while maintaining their dignity and self-respect.

Improve Federal Child Nutrition Programs

• Increase per-meal reimbursement rates to fully cover the real costs of providing healthful nutritious food to all eligible children.
• Encourage program sponsors to improve nutritional quality and serve healthier foods through updating meal pattern requirements and providing financial incentives, and grants for needed kitchen equipment.
• Reduce administrative burdens through expanding categorical eligibility and aligning statutory and paperwork requirements.

Invest in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)

• Improve benefits by increasing benefit amounts, in part by using the Low-Cost Food Budget as the basis of benefit levels, and extending eligibility to vulnerable populations such as documented immigrants and families leaving TANF.
• Remove barriers to access by simplifying applications, eliminating special rules and enhancing federal support for administration and outreach.

Support Innovative Demonstration Projects and Outreach

• Support outreach efforts which promote program participation.
• Elicit successful strategies from advocates for reducing hunger among vulnerable populations and in rural areas.
• Encourage and support collaborations between state agencies and advocates.
• Improve and expand performance bonuses to all federal nutrition programs for states that successfully increase participation and reduce barriers for participants.
• Create participation incentives or requirements for agencies and entities funded by federal programs, such as schools and child care providers, to participate in the federal nutrition programs.

Expand Access to Healthy, Affordable Food

• Create incentives for grocery stores and supermarkets to locate themselves in low-income, underserved areas, thereby eliminating food deserts and providing much-needed local employment.
• Remove barriers to healthy, affordable food by requiring that all participating grocery stores and supermarkets accept WIC and SNAP benefits.

NERAHN is a dynamic body through which organizations share best practices, effective strategies and innovative projects. NERAHN members represent rural and urban areas, and work on issues ranging from charitable food distribution to nutrition policy. The NERAHN network is pleased to be a part of this ongoing conversation and would be delighted to provide any additional assistance or information.

Respectfully Submitted,

Northeast Regional Anti-Hunger Network